The West: Ambrose and Augustine

Two men were responsible for major changes of direction in the Church of their day which affected Western Christianity for centuries to come.

Ambrose was born in 339, the son of Aurelius Ambrosius, the head of one of the few major Christian families in Rome, who had risen to be praetorian prefect of the Gauls (Britain, Gaul, the German provinces, Spain and a small area round Tangier).

Ambrose contributed to the recognition of the ascetic way of life as the highest service to Christ but placed it firmly under episcopal control. He destroyed the remnants of Arianism in the West, and in 382-4 warded off the last great effort by the then pagan majority in the Roman Senate to safeguard the outward symbols of the pagan past in the Senate-house at Rome. His most lasting contribution to Western Christian­ity, however, concerned his dealings with the successive emperors, Valen- tinian II (375-92) and his mother Justina, and Theodosius (379-95).

Valentinian’s court at Milan, though Christian, was not Catholic-orthodox. The young emperor was under the influence of his mother, a liberal-minded Sicilian namedJustina, and considered the Creed of Ariminum of 359, that defined the Son as ‘like the Father’, as a reasonable statement of orthodoxy. To Ambrose, however, it was Arianism, and when early in 385Justina requested a church outside the walls of Milan for the use of those who accepted Ariminum rather than Nicea, Ambrose refused.

The decisive moment came in 390. Now the emperor was Theodosius I. He had moved into Italy in 388 to defeat the usurper Magnus Maximus, whose army from Hadrian’s Wall had made a bid for power in the West. Magnus Maximus was defeated and Valentinian sent to Trier to rule the Gallic provinces. Theodosius chose Milan as his headquar­ters. He was an able but headstrong ruler, and when a riot broke out in Thessalonica resulting in the death of one of his senior officers, he prepared a drastic punishment for the townsfolk. They were lured into the amphitheatre on the promise of a spectacular show, and when they were there, soldiers massacred 7,000 of them.

By any standards this was a terrible deed, made worse by Theodosius having indicated to Ambrose that less serious penalties would be imposed. Ambrose reacted calmly. In mid-September 390, he wrote to Theodosius. He praised his eminent qualities of statesmanship and zeal for the true faith, but his temper had got the better of him. He must be excommunicated. ‘I dare not offer the Sacrifice. That which may not be done when the blood of one innocent person has been shed, may it be done where many have been slain? I believe not.’ The effect has been lasting. Ambrose had asserted successfully the superiority of moral law over all expediency of state.

Augustine’s contribution to Western theology and ethics was different but just as lasting. He was a North African, being born at Thagaste (Souk Aharas) in Numidia (eastern Algeria) on 13 November 354. For once the date is important because it falls in the period of Catholic ascendancy in North Africa which lasted from 347 until 361. Thagaste had been a Donatist town before this, but switched allegiances and did not return to Donatism after the Emperor Julian had given complete toleration to all the Christian churches (in the hope that they would tear each other to pieces). Though some of Augustine’s relations were Donatists, his experience was wholly within the Cathohc Church in North Africa. The Confessions, which he wrote in 397, provide an outline of his early life and some insights (but by no means a complete picture) into his outlook. He was promising but not brilliant at school. Though never inclined to revert to his father’s pagan religion, he had little sympathy with the religion of his mother Monica, for its moralism and literal acceptance of Scripture, particularly the Old Testa­ment. When he went to the University of Carthage in 372, his mind was opened by the works of Cicero and his religious sense satisfied by the questioning, rationalist, yet wholly dualist interpretation of Christianity put forward by the Manichees. These were disciples of the Persian religious reformer, Mani (216-77), who preached a universal faith based on Gnostic dualism with the addition of Buddhist and Zoroastrian elements. In North Africa, the Manichees formed cells, often within the Catholic Church, among the literate members of the community. They rejected the Old Testament, emphasising instead the dualistic passages in the Pauline Epistles, and venerated Mani as ‘the apostle of Jesus Christ’.

Augustine’s ambitions were towards a career in public service. His ability as a speaker gained him the position of Professor of Rhetoric and official spokesman at the court of Justina and Valentinian II at Milan in 384. There, the pressures were on him to revert at least nominally to orthodox Christianity and to marry a suitable heiress. His faithful mistress was returned to North Africa. He heard in the sermons of Ambrose a more acceptable, allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. His own reading of Neoplatonist works freed him finally from the dualism of the Manichees. His mother’s arrival in Milan and his own inability to reconcile himself to a two-year wait for his prospective wife strengthened the ascetic ideal in his conscience. He was ready to listen to stories of the conversion of Neoplaton- ists (such as Marius Victorinus in Rome) and brilliant young civil servants (like himself) to ascetic orthodox faith. His conversion came in August 386 and he was baptised in Milan Cathedral at Easter 387.

Augustine did not have the chance to escape from the world, as Paulinus of Nola had done. His mother died at Ostia in October 387. Augustine returned to Africa. At first he established a monastery at Thagaste, but in 391 (while on business for his monastery) he found himself ordained priest at Hippo on the coast of Numidia. Four years later he was bishop.

The ideas for which Augustine is famous grew directly out of the two great controversies in which he was engaged through­out the rest of his life, first with the Donatists, from 399 to 412, and secondly with Pelagius and his followers, from 413 to 430. Against the Donatists, Augustine was able gradually to marshal imperial and official aid and finally have them proscribed after a three-day conference at Carthage in June 411. The issues had been the nature of the Church and the relation of Church and State. Against the Donatist claim that integrity was the hallmark of a true church, Augustine stressed the universality of the Church, recalling God’s promises to Abraham, to make him father of many nations (see Gen.

If freedom inevitably meant freedom to err, Augus­tine was unlikely to have much sympathy for those who like Pelagius believed in the inborn ability of man to live by God’s commands: ‘Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48) would not have been ordered if it was impossible. For Augustine, however, the fall of Adam had bequeathed to all his successors a legacy of sin, from which only God’s grace, given to a pre-ordained few, would rescue the sinner. Again, backed by the superb organisation of the North African Church he prevailed, this time over the south Italian episcopate and the instincts of the Papacy itself. The Pelagians were condemned in 418, though the issues of Free Will and Grace continued to be argued down to Augustine’s death in August 430, and beyond. On the very eve of the barbarian invasions, Western Europe was bequeathed the legacy of the Augustinian teaching on Predestination and Grace.